Five questions with... Museum of London Docklands

1. 2023 marks the Museum of London Docklands 20^th anniversary – what do you have planned for celebrating this amazing milestone?

This Saturday, 10 June, we kickstart our celebrations marking 20 years of Museum of London Docklands at the big Docklands Street party, which will headline a yearlong programme of events celebrating the people, culture, landscape and history of the East End.

Drag Race royalty, Vanity Milan, will help lead the birthday celebrations with party pioneers, Hackney Showroom, hosting an evening of live performances on outdoor stage the ’Bobby Dazzler’. We’ll have local street food and pop-up bars showcasing the best local food and drink as well as our makers market - a homage to East London’s creative thinkers, artists, and craft-lovers!

We have activities for both adults and children, including a scavenger hunt, the Spitalfields ballad walk, a queer pub crawl and so much more. Our galleries will be open to visitors after hours, with curated talks and tours, and film screenings that bring new light to London’s history.

2. Following the birthday celebrations, what do you have planned in your programme for the upcoming year?

Later this month, the Windrush 75th anniversary will be marked with our Riddim & Poetry event, an evening of performance and readings from poets of Caribbean heritage, exploring intergenerational themes of migration, home and community and reflecting on the museum’s own connections to this history.

Our next big burst of activity will be in September when we will host a Mudlarking festival, running foreshore tours with an expert from the British Museum to assess items found on the banks of the Thames. The autumn will see the opening of the new major exhibition Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners shaped Global style (13 October 2023-14 April 2024). For the first time in two decades, the exhibition will uncover the major contribution of Jewish designers in making London an iconic fashion city.  From East End tailors to the couture salons of the West End, the exhibition tells the story of Jewish designers, makers and retailers responsible for some of the most recognisable looks of the 20th century.

3. Your birthday coincides with Museums Week, for which this year we are celebrating museums located in the heart of communities around the country. How does the Museum of London Docklands engage with the East London community that you serve?

We always look for ways to collaborate with the local community. The museum’s engagement projects involve community groups and organisations in the development of displays and programmes. Our most recent free display which opened last month, Indo + Caribbean: The creation of a culture, is the result of a community call out for ideas to feature in the museum’s London, Sugar and Slavery gallery. Working together with Londoners of Indo-Caribbean descent, the display tells the underrepresented history of Indian indenture in the British Caribbean, and explores Indo-Caribbean culture in London today.

Alongside this, our programme of family events at weekends and during school holidays, in particular our weekend-long family festivals attract over 5,000 people and are planned and delivered in collaboration with local communities.

We’ve also prioritised and built a strong and well-known schools programme with over 30,000 pupils visiting per year - the vast majority come from schools in local boroughs that visit to engage children with the history of East London.

4. East London culture is constantly moving and changing, as it has done for hundreds of years, including very much so in the two decades you’ve been open. What would you say however is a constant within East London culture?

The East End is one of the most diverse areas in London. It comprises a vast, rich and diverse heritage made up of numerous communities that continue to grow, live on, and shape London today, reflected in the food and drink of different communities, the dance and music – and the many ways they express themselves.

The vibrancy and creativity of the East End cultures and the diversity of lived experiences within local communities continues to shine. From the museum’s perspective, given the nature of our collections and our location in a historic dock warehouse, the legacy of the docks and London’s involvement in global trade is a constant, including of course the legacies of transatlantic slavery.

5. As we move into to our next National Portfolio, and looking ahead to the next 20 years, how can you envisage the museum changing and developing in the future?

Following two decades of being in West India Quay, we’ve put together our new strategy, titled Moving Centre Stage, because with Museum of London temporarily closed for its relocation to Smithfield – our Docklands site has taken centre stage.

Our strategy has three main pillars – the first is to grow our audience, both in terms of numbers and diversity, the second is to improve our content, both in what we have and what we show and the third is the efficiency of how we operate.

The Museum of London Docklands plans to evolve to reflect how East London and its communities change in the future, and we envisage becoming even more community oriented, offering more opportunities for co-produced displays and programmes, and building on our role as a community resource for local families and schools. The London Sugar & Slavery gallery is an incredibly important aspect of the museum’s identity, and our related schools and family programming will develop alongside with the gallery to ensure that it reflects best practice, the latest research and our learnings from our work with African and Caribbean communities.

The closure of our London Wall site last December in preparation for the opening of the London Museum in 2026 also provides an opportunity for the Museum of London Docklands to raise its profile London-wide and beyond, for instance, through its exhibition programme, to engage a larger audience with the heritage and contemporary cultures of East London.